[LINK] ABC News Critique

[Paul Bolger]

> That's a good point, Stephen.  There's much more depth from the
> broadsheets.  Probably something to do with the attention span of the
> audience.

Or that it would take about half an hour to read out loud a broadsheet
feature story. Next time you have a dinner party try reading out a two
thousand word feature article from the SMH. I suspect you'll find that
the 'attention span' of your friends is not too good either.

ABC news online is run by their 'news' as opposed to 'current affairs'
section. In broadcast terms news produce the radio and television
bulletins, but not AM, PM, 7.30 Report etc.
News Online do attempt to incorporate or cross link to the current
affairs material, but the producers of these programs are reluctant to
let their work be 'rebranded' as generic 'news'.

If you want in-depth stories you'll generally need to look on the
individual program sites.

When the online news service started there was a hope that online
would be funded as a complete news section, and would have feature
writers, 'break' stories etc - but the reality has always been that
it's much cheaper and easier to put up the stories from the news
service than it is to produce new material, or to repurpose material
as text.

The broadsheets don't actually do much with their online content other
than to chuck it into the CMS. If you take a look at the transcripts
of a program like Background Briefing you'll notice that a feature
radio piece often makes pretty bad reading. And television is even
worse.


For my money the worst 'feature' of the new ABC site is the 'also of
interest' section.
It uses keywords to try and select other items which are similar to
the one you are reading.
I was reading "Bear kills boy at campsite" (this was a few weeks ago).
Apparently that means I'm also interested in:

Grizzly bear kills couple in Alaska
Leopard kills 4-year-old in Bombay
Biologist survives second bear attack
Julia Roberts gives birth to baby boy
Alligator kills Florida man in canal

Spot the odd one out!